Okay folks. Doing something different this week. Many months back, I had people on my mailing list send me their best scenes from their current scripts. The plan was to read them all, then review the full scripts of the best scenes. Due to a couple of factors (the primary one being that I didn’t find anything that blew my socks off), I’ve changed my mind. Instead of reviewing the entire script, I’m only going to review the scenes. I realized that in all the reviewing I’ve done on this site, I rarely analyze and break down individual scenes. And obviously, with scenes being the primary building blocks of a screenplay, that’s kind of absurd! So this week, I’m going to review five scenes, and then, whichever one gets the best feedback, I’ll review the entire script. Let the fun begin!

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Premise: (from writer) ALIENS meets THE MATRIX as a troubled soldier leads a group of mercenaries into a hostile, alien dimension to retrieve an ancient artifact. Against his wishes, his estranged father is along for the ride and is the only one that can lead them out.
Scene setup: The writer’s setup is too elaborate to include, but basically we’re in a gigantic alien hive lit by a river of flowing lava.
Writer: Logan Haire
Details: 7 pages

Download and read the scene here.

As I started reading the scenes for Scene Week, I learned the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in a long time. Let me set the scene (heh heh). I was at a café for reasons beyond my control, and so had to read some scene submissions in a busy place with people constantly walking in and out of the door just a few feet away from me. It was Distraction Nation. Which meant I had a hard time concentrating.

So I’m trying to read page after page but something’s always happening. A click. A bang. A loud laugh. Something always caused me to jerk up, to see what was going on.

That’s when it hit me.

When you write, you have to write in such a way that the reader CAN NEVER LOOK AWAY. You have to make it IMPOSSIBLE for them to look away, no matter what kind of distraction pops up.

I remember reading a book a couple of years ago – “Before I Go To Sleep.” It was told from the perspective of a woman waking up with amnesia who was in bed with a man she didn’t recognize. She was scared, confused. She needed answers. She realized this wasn’t the “long night out, wake up the next morning” type of forgetfulness. This was a deep forgetfulness. Something bigger and more terrifying. Then, when she walked to the bathroom, when she looked in the mirror, she almost fainted. She saw someone 15 years older than herself staring back at her. Why the hell did she look like this?? The scene continued like this and even though I HAD to go to sleep because I had a big day the next day, I couldn’t stop reading!  I NEEDED to figure out what had happened to this woman.

I felt the same way when I read The Disciple Program and Django Unchained. Tyler and Quentin wrote these scenes that you just COULDN’T look away from, even if you wanted to. They pulled you in and never let you go. Sadly, I can’t say a single scene I read here (out of hundreds of submissions) compelled me to keep reading. Don’t get me wrong. There were a lot of SOLID scenes. There was a lot of professional-level writing. But again, there was nothing that made me want to read the entire script.

For that reason, I think it’s best to look at this week more as a learning experience than a “These are the best!” set of posts. The truth is, I haven’t spent a lot of time breaking down scene-writing on the site. So I’ll probably learn a few things myself.

As such, even though I know it will make the comments section messy, feel free to pitch your scene (and provide a link to it) if you felt like your scene was INDEED “Must Read” worthy. If a bunch of commenters verify that, yes, your scene kicked ass, I’ll be more than happy to review it. So again, I found about 20 decent scenes that were all of similar quality, and I’m basically picking at random between them for the 5 reviews.

For those who didn’t read the Harbinger scene, it’s basically about a group of military dudes who find themselves in some sort of alien hive. As they’re walking through this thing, they see the aliens (or demons, as they’re known) skittering through the hive walls, watching them. What starts as just watching, slowly evolves into an attack, and our guys start running and shooting in a desperate bid to save themselves. They even enact a “nano second skin” that can’t be penetrated as part of their defense. But with the demons are growing in number and with our team running out of solid ground, even that may not be enough.

I chose this scene because, while it didn’t do anything mind-blowing, it was a solid action scene that kept me entertained, that I could visualize, and that I could imagine on the big screen.

The first thing that stuck out to me is something that barely ANYONE did with their scene submission, and that’s create suspense. We see the shadows of these demons running through the hive walls as our military group is walking. We know it’s only a matter of time before they come out. So we’re on edge. That anticipation is getting us all antsy, scared of WHEN they’re going to attack. That’s how you want your audience to be. All antsed up! You never want them to be relaxed.

You know when you have one of those impossible days? You have to write, work, read a friend’s script, pick up your dry cleaning, get your girlfriend a card, pay a few bills, be home for the cable installation, etc., etc.? Add to this that you woke up late. So you’re already behind on the day. Just the thought of doing all these things in such a small amount of time stresses the hell out of you. I want you to imagine that feeling. That’s the kind of feeling you want your reader to have when they’re reading your script! They have to feel like there’s so much that needs to get done and there’s no way your characters can do it.

I also like how this scene builds. It progresses. It isn’t just stagnant and one note like a lot of the scenes I read. Aliens start slinking out of the hive, bit by bit. So the threat is getting more intense. In other words, the situation is DIFFERENT from how it was one page ago. And the threat will be even worse one page later, growing again.

I also like how when the action begins, it’s told inside 1-2 line paragraphs (with an occasional 3-liner). I see a lot of bad action scripts that pile in 3-4 line paragraphs one after another during huge action scenes. If stuff is supposed to be happening fast on the screen, shouldn’t it be happening fast in the reader’s head? To do that, you have to keep the lines short and sparse.

Likewise, Logan’s prose was very clear. And you may be saying, “Shouldn’t that be a given?” The answer is yes, but it’s something I saw a LOT of writers in Scene Submissions struggle with. And here, it’s INCREDIBLY important, because we’re talking about an alien world, an alien setting, multiple characters, and a lot of action. It’s easy for a reader to get confused if a writer isn’t doing his job.

My worry here is that the scene (and concept) is too familiar. It’s a lot like a video game (Gears of War for me, and of course, Aliens on the film side), and the lava stuff reminded me of the dreadful CGI ending to Revenge of the Sith. This kind of stuff seems like it shouldn’t matter. But it does. Anyone who reads your script is going to get a little weary if it’s too similar to something else. We want to see originality, something new and different, and that’s not what I got here. When I said earlier, “None of the scenes I read propelled me to want to read the scripts,” for Harbinger, is was that “too familiar” feeling that did it in.  I’ve been in this world numerous times already.  So why would I want to revisit it?

With that said, I might give it 10 pages. Logan has proven he can write a scene. And for that, I have to give him props.

Harbinger Scene Link

Harbinger Script Link

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (barely made the cut)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I didn’t see this in Logan’s script, but his sparse writing reminded me of it. — Isolate character names during big action sequences to create more of a “vertical” read. A “vertical” read just means that a lot of the text is near the left side of the margin and all the action lines are sparse, allowing a reader’s eyes to fly down the page “vertically”). I don’t like to see this used just anywhere in a script. But it’s a GREAT approach to adapt for action writing. For example, instead of:

Jetson lands hard on the concrete, shaking the room. He spins his gun out of his holster and shoves it into Frank’s face. Frank stares down the barrel of the gun, half an inch from his nose.

You’d write:

JETSON

Lands hard on the concrete, shaking the room.

He spins his gun out of its holster, SHOVES it into Frank’s face.

FRANK

Stares down the barrel of the gun, half an inch from his nose.

So I’m peering out at the specscape this diddly-do and it’s not looking so volcanic . “Diddly-do” is code for “day” by the way. “Specscape” is code for “spec landscape.” And I have no idea what volcanic means.  Actually, before I continue, you should know that I quit sugar cold-turkey recently. And you have to realize, I was a sugar addict. It’s now Day 7 and my intelligence has gone waaaaaay down as a result. Like miles below sea level. I know it was already underwater to begin with, but that’s still low.  I’m still going to write this blog post though because I’m feeling passionate about something. Quentin Tarantino when he talks about NO HARD EIGHT FOR YOU-type passionate!

Where was I? Right, so there have really only been 2 “true” spec sales this year (one about Greek Gods in modern day. Another about an astronaut trying to survive a hobbled spacecraft) and I’m thinking that’s not enough, man. True, lazy-ass Hollywood really didn’t get started until January 6th (you can’t put January 1st on a Wednesday and expect people to go balls to the wall for two days, go back to a relaxed weekend, then start up again – of course they’re going to wait until the 6th), but 17 days and only two spec sales isn’t enough. Especially with everyone geeked up to find the first great script of 2014.  We should have had 5 or 6 big spec sales already.

Now some might say that Hollywood isn’t a spec-sale town anymore. And that’s true to a certain degree. It ain’t the 90s. These days it’s more about finding writers with potential, sending them to meetings everywhere in town, and hoping they book some assignments. But I think Hollywood is always ready to buy something if it’s good. And therein lies the problem. Nobody’s been writing anything good!

Remember back in the day when Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott used to write all those awesome screenwriting articles on their website? And we’d visit that site every week because they were guaranteed to give us something new to think about? There’s one article I remember quite well, though the title of it escapes me. It was basically about the fact that when you’re writing a screenplay, each page you’re writing needs to be worth a million dollars. Because that’s how much they’re going to spend on the budget of the film (110 pages, 1 million per page, 110 million dollar budget). So the question they posed was, “What makes your writing worth a million dollars a page?”

I never forgot that. And sure, there’s an argument to be made that that’s the most unhealthy approach to creating art ever. But I don’t agree. Thinking in those terms can actually help you become a better writer. Because all it’s doing is it’s making you justify your choices and your effort.

And they need to be justified, because the stakes have gone WAY up since that article. These days, the budgets for major studio films START at a hundred million, and can go up to THREE-HUNDRED MILLION. Add marketing and distribution costs for not just America, but dozens of countries around the world, and we could be talking a 600 million dollar investment before a single person buys a ticket.

With the average screenplay being 110 pages, that equals out to almost SIX MILLION DOLLARS PER PAGE.

Welcome to the new state of movies. So do you believe your script is worth 6 million dollars per page? That’s a pretty intimidating question right? You can see why these studios lean so heavily towards intellectual property. That’s their answer to the question, “Why are our in-house scripts worth 6 million dollars a page?” Because Batman has proven to be a beloved bankable hero for 70 years. Because millions of people have read and loved The Hunger Games and they’ll come out to see a movie-version of the book.

But yeah, that six million dollar a page figure is a little scary. So let’s dial it back and be more realistic. Most big-time studio movies have around a 200 million dollar budget, which means each one of your pages needs to justify 2 million dollars spent. Do you believe each one of your pages justify that kind of investment?

That’s a really complicated question but here’s an interesting way to look at it. Can someone open your script to any page, read it, and say, “That page is worth 2 million dollars?” I don’t know. I mean not all pages are created equal. Some you need to have context to understand. Some are naturally more exciting than others.

Ah, but I’ll tell you this. Anyone can definitely open a script to a random page and say, with certainty, “That’s not worth 2 million dollars.” And I believe that’s the secret to writing a “2 million dollar a page” screenplay. Your job is simply to make sure that people can’t open your script to any page and be able to tell right away that it isn’t worth 2 million bucks. All that page needs to be is good enough so that that person can’t definitively say it isn’t. To know for sure, they have to read on. And if you’ve done your job, after reading the next page, they’ll want to read the next one, and then the next one after that and the next one after that until they get to the end. You’ve written a 2-million dollar a page screenplay if someone who picks it up CAN’T PUT IT DOWN until they finish. That is the ONLY surefire way to know if you’ve written something that a studio will invest 200 million dollars in.

Here’s the root of the problem for why we’re not seeing enough of these types of screenplays.  Writers aren’t trying hard enough. I mean assuming you know the basics – how to come up with a marketable fresh premise, how to create a complex interesting main character, how to keep your narrative moving, how to structure your script – it’s up to you to give us 100%.

Want to know how to write 110 2-million dollar pages? Start with the scene. There are 50-60 scenes in every script. I want you to answer this next question honestly. Don’t bullshit yourself or me. That latest script you’ve been pushing to everyone, trying to get everyone to read? How many of those 60 scenes can you say you gave 100% on? That each and every scene in that script is as good as you can possibly make it?

If you can HONESTLY tell me that all 60 of your scenes are as good as you can do? That’s great. I am virtually making sweet love to you right now. But if that’s not the case, all I can ask is, “Why?” What in the world makes you believe you can put a script out there where you haven’t made each scene as good as it can be?

Let me let you in on a secret. From the amateur spec scripts I read (and I read about 10-15 a week), do you know how many scenes in those scripts I’d say, on average, are the best the writer could’ve done? Maybe around 5. 5 scenes in each script! For more seasoned writers, I’d say maybe 20-25. Which seems better, but it’s still less than HALF of what you need to write something great!

If you want to SELL something – if you REALLY want to play with the big boys – why are you holding yourself to that shit-ass standard? Why not, when you put your script in someone’s hand, be able to say “I did as well as I possibly could’ve done here?”

The one huge advantage amateur writers have over pros is THEY HAVE NO DEADLINE. A studio isn’t all up in their e-mail box asking where the new draft is. You’re free to spend AS MUCH TIME as you want on your script, to perfect it beyond perfection, so you have no excuse not to make it great.

And if you follow that model, each page WILL be worth 2 million dollars because every page in every scene is going to have a purpose. It’s going to be there for a reason. And you’ll have added the necessary conflict or suspense or dramatic irony or plot twist or side-splitting dialogue that was necessary to make that scene great.

Look, I can’t promise you if you do this, you’re going to sell a screenplay. Because the truth is, a lot of writers don’t yet know how to write a script, how to pick a concept, how to arc a character, etc. But if you hold yourself to this standard NOW, when you’re still learning? Then by the time you DO understand all this stuff, and your skill level matches your craft, you’ll have the kind of discipline that’s going to give you a HUGE advantage over everyone else.

So get to it. Open your latest script up and make it 2-million-bucks-a-page worthy!

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: (set in 1941) A man wakes up in Mexico with no memory of his previous life or how he got there. Slowly, through the people he meets, he’s able to piece together his suspect past.
About: Today’s script is written by THE Orson Welles. You may have heard of this upstart. He co-wrote and directed a little movie called “Citizen Kane”? Oh, Orson. The man didn’t exactly have the career everyone thought he would after Kane, struggling to make films that, quite frankly, weren’t very good. This is one of those projects, a script that laid forgotten for 60-some years until it was recently found in RKO’s archives. They’re even saying they want to put this puppy into development! Find a new writer to modernize it. Well, let’s see if that’s a good idea.
Writer: Orson Welles
Details: March 25, 1941 draft. The “Third Revised Continuity” (whatever that means). 136 pages (though the over-spacing indicates it would’ve been shorter if put into proper format)

I love reading these old scripts because I love checking back on how they used to tell stories before the 10,000 screenwriting blogs and screenwriting books came around. Was storytelling “purer” back then? Did stories emerge more naturally, more organically, because writers weren’t following rules? Anti-establishment screenwriting folks will tell you, yes, of course! Books are bad! Rules be gone! Storytelling used to be a damn art form!

Oh, boy. If you think that, you are the president of Delusionville. Studios were just as strict about story and script-control back then as they are now. Case in point: When I went over to check what the studios thought of this script when it was originally turned in, they had the exact same problems with it that I did.

Storytelling is timeless. It’s followed a certain formula forever. And that’s because it’s a formula that works.

Okay, so what’s this Santiago script about? Before I tell you, let me tell you what the first line in the script is: “My face fills the frame.” You gotta love Orson Welles because lordy, lordy did he love himself!

Actually, Welles informs us before the script begins that because he’s starring in the film, he’ll be referring to himself as “Me, my, I” and whatever other pronoun can adequately capture his narcissism. So “me” wakes up in the middle of a room of people yelling at him in a dozen different languages.

He doesn’t know who these people are, how they got there, or why they care so much about him. All he knows is that he doesn’t remember anything about himself, so he can’t answer their questions. Pissed off, they eventually go away and “Me” learns that he’s in some Mexican city.

A kind, but suspicious-looking Mexican man named Gonzalez befriends “Me” and takes him into the city, where every single person who sees “Me” stares at him with scorn. Apparently our amnesiac is some sort of celebrity.

Eventually, “Me” is shot and almost killed, bringing to light just how sinister his former life must have been. He starts demanding answers from those around him and finds out his name is Lindsey Kellar, a Fascist radio personality from England. He’s trying to rally the Fascist movement wherever he can, and apparently his people sent him here to Mexico to transform them into like-minded, colonizing psychopaths.

I had to touch up on my history to understand what exactly this meant. Remember, it’s 1941, during World War 2, and the evil Axis powers wanted South America on their side. Hence, sending someone there to rile up Fascist sentiment would’ve been a big deal.

“Me” (now Kellar) learns from his fellow Fascists that he must go meet someone in the town of Santiago. Thus begins a long trek to the mysterious town. Kellar meets many sordid types along the way and eventually learns (spoiler) that he’s not really Kellar! He’s a body double FOR Kellar. The real Kellar is planning to kill a bunch of heavy-duty politicians on some boat, and Kellar was part of the plan (though I’m not sure how). Kellar must do a 180, from helping the Fascists to trying to stop them, a job he is not even close to being equipped for.

You know, I’ll be honest with you. I’m not surprised Orson Welles never had that mega career everyone was so sure he’d have. Citizen Kane is one of those screenplays (extremely layered, jumping through time, lots of characters, unorthodox narrative) that can only come from someone who doesn’t really understand the medium. Your lack of knowledge in how to tell a story actually helps you, because you’re unaware of all the rules you’re breaking. Every once in awhile, one of these newish writers gets really lucky and comes up with something genius. The problem is, they can’t replicate that success because they never learned how to tell a proper story in the first place. I feel like something similar happened to Christopher McQuarrie. There’s a reason he’s never gotten close to another Oscar since The Usual Suspects. That script could’ve only be written by someone (as he’s admitted in interviews) who didn’t fully understand the medium.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Orson was a hack. But his legacy was more in his directing, how he was unafraid to try things and push the medium. That’s where he shined. Screenwriting is difficult. It’s a wonky way to write a story. So there’s no shame in it not being one’s forte.

And I’d argue we see these screenwriting issues here. I love a good amnesiac script (note: I have no idea if using an amnesiac as the main character was considered cutting edge or cliché in 1941), but while that definitely piqued our interest in the first act, after the excitement died down, there wasn’t much left in the story to get us excited.

I knew the script was in trouble when our main character randomly stumbled onto a tour bus for 15 pages. He does so to avoid his potential killers, which I guess makes sense. But did we need to stay with these people for 15 pages???

For those of you new writers who are starting to get feedback for the first time, you may have heard the note, “You need to tighten your story up.” Or “You need to tighten the second act up.” What that means is getting rid of sequences like these. Sure, the sequence is the first to bring up that Kellar’s a celebrity around the world, so you could make the argument that it’s necessary. But that one piece of information is placed amongst 15 pages of shit we don’t need at all. Just move that reveal to another scene and get rid of this sequence.

The more exciting stuff is when Kellar’s at the Presidential Party and everyone’s looking at him like he’s Hitler (and we’re wondering why). Have him meet his contact there, have the contact tell him he needs to go to Santiago, then the only scenes from there on out should revolve around him trying to get to that plane and leave the city.

Except that when we DO get on that plane and head to Santiago, we get stuck in another tiny town where a hell of a lot doesn’t happen. We’re looking for horses. We’re looking for lodging. It gets really boring really fast. I think Welles believed in his reveals and reversals (the man who’s supposed to be helping him is actually planning on killing him) too much and thought that gave him carte blanche to take his time.

The Way to Santiago had the story goal (get to Santiago), which gave the script some narrative drive. But it spent too much time in the waiting room, forcing it to come up with something to do before the next plot point. To that end, this script really could’ve used some urgency. If Kellar had to get to these checkpoints by a certain time, Welles would’ve had no choice but to not linger on these sillier unneeded moments.

I mean, look – this was a third draft. Obviously it wasn’t meant to be perfect. But it was the draft he was pushing on the studio in the hopes of making it and I have to agree with them in that it probably wouldn’t have made a good movie. The road to Santiago was too muddled and too slow for my taste.

You can read the script for yourself here!

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: SHIT’S GOTTA HAPPEN. I’m sorry for being so blunt, but in screenplays, shit’s gotta happen! You can’t be going 15 pages on a tour bus with a bunch of non-characters (characters who we’ll never see again) bickering. You can’t spend forever with your hero looking for stuff like lodging. Shit’s gotta happen! Get through the mundane stuff quickly then move on to the next plot point because that’s what we’re going to be interested in. I’m not saying you should never take your time. But don’t extend those slow sequences out for too long and don’t pack them to close together.

What I learned 2: Don’t let your script get stuck in the waiting room. This is where you’ve pre-established (for yourself) that a plot point is going to happen at “X” point in your story, and you realize you still have 5 (or 10, or 15) pages before that plot point occurs, so you have your characters “wait around” in the meantime. Long dialogue scenes. An unneeded foray into a store (or a tour bus) to pass the time. You don’t realize that, by doing this, you’ve pulled us into the boring waiting room as well. To combat this, create a goal and give that goal some urgency (they have to be at “x” by “y” time). That should keep your characters active during these sequences.

Genre: Action/Drama/Thriller
Premise: A veteran covert operative seeks redemption for his dark deeds, devoting himself to helping others where injustice has been done.
About: This first draft made a lot of noise in Hollywood for being so amazing for a…well, a first draft! The project has Denzel Washington attached to star (who’s perfect for the role by the way) but took awhile to get its director.  It started with Nicholas Winding Refn hot off his “Drive” success.  But rumors swirled he wasn’t thrilled with the direction they were pushing the project in and bailed.  More directors came and went, including Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt.  The studio finally decided to team up a proven combination, bringing back Denzel’s “Training Day” director, Antoine Fuqua, to do the job.  They’ve also since rewritten the female lead (the waitress) to a younger girl, which Chloe Moretz will play.  I found that to be a strange choice but it looks like they’re going the Taxi Driver route, and since this has the same kind of tone, it shouldn’t affect the script much assuming the part is written well.   I have to admit I’m kinda shocked Wenk wrote this, as he’s the screenwriter of one of my least favorite scripts of last year, The Expendables 2. He also wrote The Mechanic and 16 Blocks. Wenk was born in 1952 in New Jersey and went to NYU.
Writer: Richard Wenk (based on the TV show created by Richard Lindheim)
Details: 106 pages – 1st draft

Something strikes you right away when you open The Equalizer. The writing is so sparse it borders on anorexic. Yet somehow it still contains a ton of information. To me, that’s the essence of great screenwriting. You want to convey a ton of information but you don’t want the reader to have to dig through a mountain of text to get to it. It takes years to perfect that, and still to this day, there are only a few dozen writers who can pull it off. Add Richard Wenk to that list.

I mean here’s his opening scene:

AN ALARM CLOCK

Hits 5:30 AM and goes off.

BEDROOM

Grey morning light. Alarm still BUZZING because the room’s empty.

Bed already made. Tight enough to flip a quarter. Room Spartan and immaculate.

(We then cut to the bathroom where we’ll meet our hero)

This miniature scene gives us key information about our main character. It’s 5:30 AM and he’s already up. Not only that, but his bed has been made. Not only that, but it’s “tight enough to flip a quarter” on. The room is also “Spartan” and “immaculate.” Our character clearly has his shit together getting up this early and keeping his room this nice. And with that tightly made bed, it’s a good bet he has a military background. We also get a little visual flair: “Grey morning light,” to give us a better feel for the room. All of this takes an eighth of the page to say. Wow.

So what’s The Equalizer about?

Robert McCall (“Middle aged, middle class, middle of the road looks.”) works at the local Home Depot. He’s one of those guys who keeps to himself, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. This dude’s got a dark history. Except we don’t know what that history is yet. That’ll come up later. In the meantime, we see McCall helping an overweight employee, Ralphie, with his lunch choices. He seems genuinely interested in helping Ralphie kick his unhealthy eating habits.

After work, he goes to his usual diner where he spots his only friend, if you can call the local hooker who offers a few nice words before going to earn her paycheck every night a “friend.” But McCall sees something different in Teri. He knows there’s more going on there and if she can just get out of this profession somehow, she can reach that potential.

Naturally, then, McCall is devastated when he finds out Teri was beat to within an inch of her life by her pimp, a local Russian crime boss who’s got “Don’t Fuck With Me” written all over his face. Unfortunately for him, McCall fucks with those kinds of faces.

To McCall’s credit, he offers a fair deal. 5 grand. To give Teri her freedom forever. But the boss and his half dozen thugs just laugh at McCall. Boy was that a mistake. This is the first moment where we see what McCall is capable of. With unimaginable speed and beauty, he dismantles and kills everyone in the room within 45 seconds.

The next day he sees how happy Teri is to be free of that world and he realizes – for the first time in a long time – the kind of power he wields. There are so many people out there just like Teri who are being used and taken advantage of. There’s nobody out there to stand up for them. Until now that is. McCall has just found his McCalling.

What McCall doesn’t know is that he just wiped out the Russian mafia’s entire east coast team. And that makes the mafia’s CEO, Valdimir Pushkin, very very angry. He wants this McCall taken care of to send a message to any rival families not to fuck with Pushkin’s people. Which naturally means there’s going to be a monster showdown. The Russian mafia’s biggest baddest men versus one man. The only man who can take them on all on his own. The Equalizer!

Holy shit was this a good screenplay. I have so many good things to say about this script, I don’t know where to start. First of all, the dialogue was great! I’ve read so much bad dialogue this week and it’s usually because characters are talking to each other in literal, obvious, on-the-nose, saying-what-I’m feeling, sentences. What’s cool about the dialogue here is that characters talk around things, even though they’re talking about them.

Like how McCall and Teri are talking about the book he’s reading (The Old Man And The Sea) but what they’re really doing is flirting, getting to know each other better, trying to see if the other likes them as much as they like the other.

And speaking of McCall’s reading habits, The Equalizer had this perfect little quirk that McCall is trying to conquer the “100 books you should read before you die” list. Not because it makes his character more interesting. But because his wife died and SHE was doing the list. He’s trying to accomplish what she never could. I just thought that was such an interesting way to get into backstory about one’s wife dying. Usually characters will come out point-blank and say something like, “My wife died six months ago,” and that’s it. It’s so generic that it never registers. We never feel the pain because no specificity has been put into it. Those books were that specificity that made the backstory of his wife dying real.

And then there was the character of McCall himself. He was just so damn likable! Who doesn’t love a guy who goes around evening the score for the people who can’t do it themselves? Hero-likability (or dare I say “loveability”) was hardwired into this script, which made you want to follow McCall through anything.

When he takes down that room of Russians, mark my words, that’ll be one of the coolest crowd-pleasing scenes of the year. Just the moment when he’s about to walk out of the restaurant with the Russians taunting him, and instead of opening the door, he LOCKS IT – that has to be one of the most badass moments ever!

I’ve heard a few people complain that McCall never really encounters any resistance in the script. There’s “no doubt” that he’s going to win every time. What’s strange is that I’ve had this same complaint about a lot of scripts. But it didn’t bother me here for some reason and I don’t know why. I think it’s because I liked McCall so much and I hated all these lowlifes so much, that all I cared about was them getting their due. I didn’t need resistance. I needed him to put them in their place.

This is such a surprising script in that the setup is so generic. I mean, give this to 999 other writers, they would’ve written a generic piece of garbage. But Wenk is that one in a thousand screenwriter who knew what to do with it. This is cream of the crop screenwriting here. I don’t have anything bad to say about the script. Find it if you can and read it now!

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[xx] impressive (Top 10!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: Notice the double dose of likage Wenk hits us with right away to make sure we’ll love McCall. At first, his co-workers make fun of him (we’re always sympathetic towards people who get put down/bullied by others). Then McCall goes to lunch and helps an overweight co-worker stay on his diet (we’re always sympathetic towards people who help others). Remember guys, don’t just make your hero likable.  Make him double-likable.

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Genre: Biopic
Premise: (from writer) The true story of Bobby Riggs, The Battle of the Sexes, and how the mafia may have influenced the most famous tennis match in history.
Why You Should Read: (from writer) Rigged combines something you love (tennis) with something you hate (biopics). Like chocolate covered raisins. It’s also tailor-made for an A-list actor (Paul Giamatti?), has clear GSU and features some of the most intense tennis scenes this side of Bridesmaids. Is this the first amateur biopic to get a “Worth the Read” by Carson?”
Writer: Andrew Parker
Details: 94 pages

As I was a tennis nerd in another lifetime, I’m very familiar with this match. It’s one of the most important events in sports history. It showed that the girls could hang with the guys. Well, sort of. I mean, throwing an aging out-of-shape weirdo (as Riggs was) to compete against one of the best women in the world in her prime wasn’t exactly the best way to prove anything. But when King won, it really helped people take women more seriously in the sport and gave Women’s Rights a healthy push as well. Now, women’s tennis is the most lucrative female sport in the world. In all the major tennis championships, women and men get paid the same amount of prize money. There is no other sport that does that.

Now if you’re looking for a heavy facts-driven honest interpretation of the “Battle of the Sexes” spectacle, writer Andrew Parker would probably suggest you look somewhere else. “Riggs” is light and fluffy most of the way through, which is both an advantage and a fault.

It’s 1971 and Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon champion now in his 50s, is bored with life. He works for some big boring company. His boss is his step-father. In order to get through the days, he comes up with inventive games and calls his bookie to put money on all the major sporting events. Yup, Riggs is both a lazy bum and a gambler. A winning combination!

At some point, Riggs realizes “real work” isn’t his thing and decides to head west to have fun with his life again. So he leaves his wife and son to… well, hustle people I guess. Riggs isn’t the kind of guy who’s always got a plan. That is until he watches a women’s tennis match on TV and realizes that he could probably beat the socks off of them. And people would probably pay to see him do so.

So Riggs puts on his promoter shoes and starts telling any TV network that will have him that women suck. They need to stay in the kitchen and work on being pregnant. And that any man, even an aging old grandpa like himself, could beat them on a tennis court. He backs up his talk when he beats the number 1 female player in the world, Margaret Court (One of the best tennis names ever). And then he challenges Billie Jean King. Fearing that if she loses it will set women’s rights back 20 years, King is reluctant at first, but finally comes around.

In the meantime, Riggs’s betting is getting out of control, and some shady mafia buddies are on his case for the 100 grand he owes them. This forces Riggs to go out and promote the hell out of the match in order to get as many people to watch it as possible (it is reported that over 90 million people eventually watched the match), so he can get them their money.

But in a twist, his mafia buddies tell him at the last second that they want him to throw the match. They figure they can make a hell of a lot more than the money Riggs owes them that way. Riggs starts to buckle under all the pressure and goes into a tailspin, drinking and partying. By the time the match arrives, he’s not in shape, and ends up getting embarrassed in straight sets by King. He wanted a re-match, but King wouldn’t give him one. The two remained friends until Riggs’s death in 1995.

Ahhh! I long for the days when tennis was relevant, when the sport actually took chances and put together stuff like this to drum up interest. Now we got bore-snores like Azarenka and Novak Djokovic. Also, all the players like each other. They’re all best buds. They hug and hang out after the match. I wouldn’t be surprised if they showered together and scrubbed each other’s backs. Back in the old days, with McEnroe and Conners, after a match you threw your racket at your opponent’s face! It was fun to watch people play because people didn’t like each other dammit!

Where were we? Oh yeah! This script. So I thought Rigged was pretty good. The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t read AT ALL like a biopic. You know how I am when I see that word. “Biopic.” It’s the equivalent of a deadly thirsty man hearing the words “desert.” I just see insurmountable blocks of text and thousands of overly dramatic scenes about daddy didn’t hug me enough. Double fault on that.

This script is really clean. The writing is so sparse you find yourself 20 pages in within minutes. And for the most part, that approach worked. I love how Parker made Riggs funny. He’s a hustler. He’s a bit of a slimeball. And he doesn’t take life too seriously. So when he’s fucking around with his co-worker or trading barbs with his older bro, I was usually smiling.

But this was also the script’s biggest problem. When we did want there to be meat, it wasn’t there. And big moments were relegated to half-page snapshots. For example, Riggs just decides to leave his family to go hang out on the West Coast. He tells his wife and is out of his family’s life within five lines. WTF????

I’m thinking there’d probably be a little more build-up, conflict and thought involved before making that decision, particularly because he’s not just leaving his wife. He’s leaving his son! Speaking of, the son here is just a-okay with everything! Dad can’t hang out but wants to drink with his friends instead, no problem! Dad wants to leave him and his mom for years, no problem! I mean this kid was the most well-adjusted cool-with-anything kid I’d ever met! We clearly needed to dig into that more. I usually see these types of problems with sub-100 page scripts. There’s not enough fleshing out. “Rigged” was no exception.

The other major problem is that Rigged looks at the less interesting side of this battle. I mean, Riggs has so little at stake compared to King. King was playing for half the world. Riggs was playing to pay back his bookie. There was something so empty about that. And I’m not saying Parker should spin around and cover King instead, because that would make this a much more serious script and I liked how Rigged was sort of a light-hearted comedy. But if you are going to focus on Riggs, we need a better reason why winning this match is so important to him. He doesn’t have to figure it out right away. But he needs to figure it out at some point so that when he steps on that court, we care about him.

Then also, this ending makes Billie Jean King look TERRIBLE. I mean this basically says, “The only reason Riggs lost this match was because he tanked for his bookies.” I know there’s that moment in the match where Riggs decides, “No, I’m going to try to win,” but it was practically a throwaway moment. There was no conviction to it. So we didn’t believe it.

You also point out that Riggs was really out of shape and hadn’t practiced at all. Again, this takes everything away from King’s win. And you have to understand that the people who are going to see this movie are the people who love the fact that King won this match and changed the world. To finish with a finale that basically says, “Riggs gave her the match,” isn’t going to go over well. This needs to be rewritten SOMEHOW to emphasize that Riggs gave this his all and tried 100%. I don’t know if that means getting rid of the bookies or what. But it needs that ending.

And maybe you can kill two birds with one stone here. Riggs was known as an ultra-competitive guy who hated to lose. I’d love to see more of that infused into his character. Make it this guy’s fatal flaw, his Achilles heal. Not only will you get some of that depth I’m asking for, but then you can really highlight this in the final match, and emphasize how this guy is giving it his all.

I’m going to give this script a BARELY worth the read because I think it has a lot of upside and I like Parker as a writer. I just want him to infuse a little more meat into his work. It needs that meat if we’re going to care during the final match.

Script Link: Rigged

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you’re conceiving a concept, look at every angle of the concept to make sure you’re exploring the most interesting one. For example, you might have your mind set on a movie about a cop who’s hunting down a drug dealer who’s wreaking havoc on the town. But maybe telling the story from the drug dealer’s point of view, making him an underdog who’s trying to provide for his family, might make the better story.